1. Field of the Invention
The present invention relates to making of panorama image (referred to also as “panorama”) composed of a plurality of images, and more particularly to a camera system for obtaining a panorama image by joining shot images together, a camera control apparatus for controlling a camera, a panorama image making method for making panorama images and a computer program product.
2. Description of the Related Art
To make a panorama image by joining a plurality of images together, there has hitherto been used a method of making a panorama image by joining images shot by a plurality of cameras with the same zoom magnification or a camera with a pan/tilt function of which zoom magnification is fixed together (see Cited Patent Reference 1, for example).
Related-art panorama images will be described with reference to FIGS. 1 and 2. FIG. 1 is a schematic diagram to which reference will be made in explaining panorama image shooting processing according to the related art. Also, FIG. 2 is a schematic diagram showing an example of a completed panorama image according to the related art.
A camera, generally depicted by reference numeral 101 in FIG. 1, is a still camera, for example. The camera 101 shoots a plurality of images constructing a desired panorama image 110 with a fixed zoom magnification. For example, first, the camera 101 is directed to an upper left portion of the panorama image 110 as a shooting start position to shoot an image 111. Next, the camera 101 is moved from the shooting position of the image 111 to the right-hand direction of FIG. 1 by a predetermined pan angle to shoot an image 112. Further, the camera 101 is moved by a predetermined pan angle to shoot an image 113, . . . . Thus, the camera 101 is able to shoot images sequentially. After a last image 111n of the first stage was shot by the camera 101, the shooting position of the camera 101 is set to the left end of the second stage and the camera 101 is able to shoot images 122, 123, . . . . Then, the camera 101 shoots images from an image 111m of the left end of the last stage to an image 111mn of the right end. After shooting of all images required to make the panorama image 111 was finished, the panorama image 110 is made by joining these images.
As shown in FIG. 2, the completed panorama image 110 is composed of a plurality of images with a uniform display size.
[Cited Patent Reference 1] Japanese unexamined patent publication No. 11-18003